10 U.S. counties with the most recorded shark attacks

A single Florida county accounts for more than a fifth of every unprovoked shark attack ever recorded in U.S. waters. Volusia County has logged 303 of the 1,437 unprovoked attacks documented nationally since 1837, more than double the total of any other county. The answer to where most shark attacks happen in the U.S. is narrow: a run of counties along Florida's Atlantic coast, two Hawaiian islands and one stretch of South Carolina barrier islands.

The national trend is moving downward. The U.S. logged 36 unprovoked shark bites in 2023, 28 in 2024 and 25 in 2025, based on International Shark Attack File data mapped by SI Yachts. Florida, the state most associated with shark encounters, recorded 11 of them in 2025. Florida, Hawaii, California and South Carolina hold the four highest all-time state totals, and 388 of all recorded U.S. attacks — 27% — fall within the decade from 2016 to 2025.

Raw counts tell only part of the story. Florida's leading counties produce high numbers of minor bites, usually a single strike to a foot or lower leg from a blacktip or spinner shark feeding in shallow, murky water near sandbars and inlets. Hawaii's totals are lower, but the state accounted for four of the 10 fatal attacks recorded nationwide over that same decade, three of them in Maui County. Two patterns sit inside one ranking: frequent and mostly superficial in Florida, less frequent and sometimes fatal in Hawaii.

The underlying risk remains low. Sharks cause an average of about one death a year in the U.S., fewer than the annual tolls from dogs, lightning strikes, venomous snakes or stings from bees, hornets and wasps. The 10 counties below are ranked by all-time recorded unprovoked attacks, a measure of where people and sharks overlap most — heavily surfed breaks, warm inlets and crowded swimming beaches — rather than where sharks are most numerous. Two pairs of counties are tied at identical totals, and both ties are presented as ties rather than ordered.

Illustration: Quartz

Volusia County has recorded 303 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, the highest all-time total of any county in the U.S. and more than twice the count of the second-place county. The figure comes from International Shark Attack File records compiled by SI Yachts.

The county sits on Florida's central Atlantic coast and takes in New Smyrna Beach, Daytona Beach and Ponce Inlet. New Smyrna draws surfers year-round to a break that sits beside a working tidal channel, and that pairing of inlet and crowded lineup accounts for much of the county's record. Baitfish push through the inlet in dense schools. Small coastal sharks, mostly blacktips and spinners, follow them into water only a few feet deep, where surfers sit on boards and swimmers stand on sandbars during the same hours.

The bites that result are usually brief and non-fatal — a single strike to a foot, ankle or hand in water too cloudy for a shark to tell a limb from a fleeing fish. Volusia's count tracks the volume of human hours spent in the surf there rather than an unusual population of large predators.

Florida's statewide numbers put the county total in perspective. The state has logged 828 unprovoked attacks since record-keeping began in 1837, well over half the national total of 1,437, and 201 of those, or 24%, fell between 2016 and 2025. Florida recorded 11 attacks in 2025, down from the 32 it logged in 2016.

Volusia's hold on the top of the national ranking has lasted decades. Warm water keeps swimmers in the ocean through Florida's winter, and the baitfish migrations that pass the inlet each spring and fall arrive on a reliable schedule. Where those two patterns overlap, the encounter rate stays high even as the statewide count drifts downward.

Illustration: Quartz

Brevard County has logged 147 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, placing it second among U.S. counties. Only Volusia, its neighbor directly to the north, has more, and the two adjoining counties together account for a sizable share of every bite ever recorded in American waters.

Brevard stretches across roughly 72 miles of Florida's central Atlantic coast and takes in Cocoa Beach, Satellite Beach, Melbourne Beach and Cape Canaveral. Its shoreline follows a nearly continuous barrier island system, with sandbars and troughs forming close to the beach. Baitfish move through those troughs during the spring and fall migrations, and the small coastal sharks trailing them — blacktips and spinners, mostly — feed in waist-deep water that swimmers and surfers are using at the same hour. Clarity in that water drops sharply once the surf churns up sand, leaving a shark little visual information to work with before it bites.

Bites in the county follow the profile common to Florida's Atlantic beaches. A shark strikes once, usually at a foot, ankle or hand, then lets go. The wound ordinarily calls for stitches rather than surgery, and Brevard carries no fatal attack on its modern record. Blacktips and spinners seldom pass six feet in length, and neither species hunts prey the size of an adult human.

Exposure drives the count as much as shark numbers do. Cocoa Beach is among the most consistently surfed breaks on the Space Coast, and Brevard's water stays warm enough for swimming through most of the year. People enter the ocean there on far more days than along most of the U.S. coastline, which widens the window in which an incidental bite can occur.

The county's total has built up gradually across nearly two centuries rather than through any recent spike. Nothing in Brevard's record indicates that the conditions behind its bites — migrating baitfish, shallow sandbars and a crowded surf lineup — have shifted in any meaningful way.

Illustration: Quartz

Palm Beach County has recorded 76 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, the third-highest all-time total of any U.S. county. Florida holds all three of the top spots, though Palm Beach's count sits far below Brevard's 147 and Volusia's 303.

The county runs along Florida's southeastern coast and takes in Jupiter, Palm Beach, Lake Worth Beach, Delray Beach and Boca Raton. Water temperatures rarely fall low enough to empty the ocean of swimmers, so the beaches stay in use through winter, when surf traffic thins out further north. A longer season in the water means more hours of overlap between people and sharks, and overlap drives these county totals more than any difference in the number of sharks present.

Geography adds a second factor. The Gulf Stream swings unusually close to shore off this stretch of coast, and the shoreline is broken by inlets at Jupiter, Lake Worth and Boynton Beach, where tidal flow concentrates baitfish. Blacktip sharks move south along the coastline each winter in dense aggregations, traveling within sight of the beach and at times inside the surf zone. Spinner sharks follow a similar seasonal route. Both species are small, and bites from either tend to be single, non-fatal injuries to a hand, foot or lower leg. Bull sharks also use the brackish water around South Florida inlets, and they reach a far larger size than the migrating blacktips.

Fishing piers compound the effect at a smaller scale. Bait, chum and cleaned fish discarded into the water draw sharks toward spots swimmers and surfers also use, concentrating prey and people in the same stretch of ocean.

Palm Beach County's documented incidents are overwhelmingly non-fatal, matching the wider Florida pattern of frequent encounters that end with an injury treated the same day. The 76 attacks accumulated across nearly two centuries of record-keeping rather than in any recent cluster, tracking the steady long-run pace seen along the state's Atlantic shoreline.

Illustration: Quartz

Maui County has recorded 64 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, the highest total of any Hawaii county and the fourth highest nationally. Its sharper distinction is severity: three of the 10 fatal shark attacks recorded in U.S. waters between 2016 and 2025 happened there.

The first came at Honolua Bay on Dec. 8, 2020, in an attack involving a tiger shark. Two years later to the day, on Dec. 8, 2022, a fatal attack occurred at Keawakapu Beach; the species was never identified. A third fatality took place at Pāʻia Bay on Dec. 30, 2023, also involving a shark that went unidentified. Three fatal incidents in one county inside a four-year window stand apart from the broader national pattern, in which the overwhelming majority of unprovoked bites produce survivable injuries.

Hawaii's statewide numbers follow their own trajectory. The state has logged 162 unprovoked attacks since 1837, and 60 of those — 37% — fall within 2016 to 2025. That is the steepest recent concentration of any state with a substantial all-time total. Attacks in Hawaiian waters are occurring more often now, measured against the state's full recorded history, than across most of the preceding century and a half.

The species mix explains part of the difference in outcomes. Tiger sharks range close to Hawaiian shorelines and grow large enough to cause catastrophic injury, unlike the small blacktip and spinner sharks behind most Florida bites. Maui's underwater topography compounds the exposure, with deep water sitting close to shore in places and reef edges that tiger sharks patrol while hunting turtles and other prey.

Maui County covers Maui, Lanai and Molokai, so the 64-attack total spans more than a single island's shoreline. The county draws heavy surfing, snorkeling and diving traffic across the full calendar year, at Honolua Bay and along Maui's south and west shores. Sustained in-water activity keeps contact rates up, and the county's record reflects that overlap rather than any documented change in shark behavior.

Illustration: Quartz

St. Johns County has recorded 42 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, tying for fifth place among U.S. counties with Oahu in Hawaii. The county sits on Florida's northeast coast around St. Augustine, where heavy beach traffic meets two inlets that keep the nearshore water murky and full of bait.

Its Atlantic shoreline runs from Ponte Vedra Beach in the north to Matanzas Inlet in the south, with St. Augustine Beach, Vilano Beach and Crescent Beach absorbing the bulk of the swimming and surfing. The St. Augustine Inlet and Matanzas Inlet both push tidal water, sediment and small fish between the Intracoastal Waterway and the open ocean on every tide cycle. Those exchange points create the low-visibility, bait-rich conditions present in most Florida bites. Anastasia State Park adds several more miles of open-access shoreline, and the breaks near the St. Augustine Inlet jetties hold surfers through the colder months.

Water temperature separates St. Johns from the counties ranked above it. The Atlantic off St. Augustine cools in winter, which thins out swimmers and sends warm-water sharks south along with the baitfish they trail. Mullet and menhaden runs in spring and fall pull people and predators into the same stretch of water at the same time, concentrating encounters into narrow seasonal windows rather than spreading them evenly across the year.

St. Johns has not produced a fatal attack in the modern record. Its incident history follows the pattern that defines Florida's Atlantic coast — one bite, usually to a foot or ankle, from a shark that releases and moves off within seconds.

The tie with Oahu is a tie in count only. An all-time total logs how often a bite was recorded, not how badly anyone was hurt, so two counties can reach the same figure through very different kinds of encounters. St. Augustine also draws year-round tourism built around its Spanish colonial historic district, which keeps visitors on the sand well outside the peak summer weeks.

Illustration: Quartz

Oahu has recorded 42 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, tying St. Johns County, Florida, for fifth place nationally and making Hawaii the only state besides Florida with two counties in the national top 10. The International Shark Attack File tracks the island under Honolulu County, which covers Oahu in its entirety.

One of the 10 fatal shark attacks logged in U.S. waters between 2016 and 2025 happened off the northwest coast of Oahu on June 23, 2024. The species responsible was never identified.

Oahu is the most populous Hawaiian island and the busiest for ocean recreation, which explains its total better than any unusual density of sharks. Waikiki draws swimmers and beginner surfers through all 12 months in warm, protected water. The North Shore pulls experienced surfers to Sunset Beach, Pipeline and Waimea Bay during the winter swell season, when crowds sit in the lineup well off the sand. Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and bodyboarding at Sandy Beach add further hours of exposure every day of the year.

The physical setting differs from the sandbar-and-inlet geography behind most mainland bites. Reef edges around Oahu drop into deep water close to shore, and tiger sharks patrol those margins hunting turtles and other large prey. Encounters on the island tend to happen farther out, in deeper water, and can involve a much larger animal than the small coastal species responsible for the bulk of Florida's bites.

Species identification is less consistent in Hawaii's records than in Florida's. Several serious incidents in state waters, the 2024 Oahu fatality among them, remain listed with the shark unidentified, since witnesses in open water rarely get a clear view of the animal. That gap matters when weighing Oahu's 42 attacks against counties where the species involved was usually confirmed afterward, because the raw count reveals nothing about the size or type of shark behind each case.

Illustration: Quartz

Duval County has recorded 40 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, seventh among all U.S. counties and the northernmost Florida entry in the national top 10. The county covers Jacksonville and its Atlantic-facing beaches, the last concentration of Florida bite records before the coastline bends toward Georgia.

Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach absorb most of the county's ocean traffic. Water temperatures there run cooler through winter than along the central and southern Florida coast, which narrows the part of the year when large crowds are in the surf. Jacksonville's surf community still keeps the beaches busy into fall and winter, when northeast swell arrives. Fewer swimmers across fewer months is the simplest explanation for a total that sits near an eighth of Volusia's, despite a broadly similar sandbar-and-trough beach profile.

The mouth of the St. Johns River at Mayport gives Duval a feature most Florida beach counties lack. The river carries brackish water far inland, and bull sharks move readily into low-salinity systems of that kind, including the St. Johns. Jetties flank the river mouth and squeeze current, bait and fishing activity into a narrow corridor beside public beach access. Standard ocean-safety guidance tells swimmers to stay clear of fishing areas and murky water for exactly those reasons.

Duval's documented incidents follow the prevailing Florida shape: a single bite to a foot, ankle or calf, treated and survived. None of the 10 fatal shark attacks recorded in the U.S. between 2016 and 2025 occurred in Duval County. Small coastal sharks trailing mullet and menhaden runs account for most encounters. Those runs peak in fall, the same season Atlantic storm systems generate swell, which puts surfers in the water exactly when the bait is moving through.

Seventh place marks a transition in the national ranking. Below the top three counties, which are separated by wide margins, the rest of the list is tightly packed. Duval sits two attacks behind the two counties tied at 42, a gap accumulated across nearly two centuries of record-keeping.

Illustration: Quartz

Martin County has recorded 37 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, the eighth-highest all-time total of any U.S. county and the sixth of seven Florida counties in the national top 10. The county sits on Florida's Treasure Coast, with Palm Beach County to its south and St. Lucie County to its north.

Stuart, Jensen Beach and Hobe Sound anchor the county's ocean frontage, along with the barrier island beaches on Hutchinson Island and Jupiter Island. Bathtub Reef Beach near Stuart, sheltered by a worm-rock reef that knocks down the surf, is one of the best-known swimming spots on that shoreline. The St. Lucie Inlet separates the two barrier islands and connects the Atlantic to the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie River estuary. Inlets work as choke points for marine life. Tidal flow pushes baitfish through a narrow channel on a predictable schedule, and the sharks feeding on those schools follow them into water shallow enough for waders and surfers to stand in.

That overlap of concentrated bait and concentrated people explains Martin County's ranking better than any unusual density of sharks. Blacktip and spinner sharks account for most bites along this stretch of coast. Both are small coastal species, and neither hunts anything close to the size or shape of a person. A bite in cloudy water near an inlet is usually a single strike to a foot, ankle or hand, after which the shark lets go and moves off.

Martin County's population is a small fraction of Palm Beach County's, and its beachfront is quieter than the surf towns of Volusia and Brevard further north, which helps explain a total well below theirs despite comparable coastal geography. Its beaches still fill up through spring and fall, when mullet and other baitfish runs track along the shoreline and surfers turn out for the swells those seasons bring.

Martin County does not appear among the sites of fatal shark attacks recorded in U.S. waters over the past decade. Its history fits Florida's wider profile of regular minor encounters rather than severe ones.

Illustration: Quartz

St. Lucie County has recorded 35 unprovoked shark attacks since 1837, tying Charleston County, South Carolina for ninth place among U.S. counties. It is one of seven Florida counties in the national top 10.

The county runs along Florida's Treasure Coast between Martin County to the south and Indian River County to the north, taking in Fort Pierce and Hutchinson Island. Water temperatures stay warm enough for swimming through most of the year, which widens the window in which people and sharks share the same shallow surf zone.

Bites here follow the profile common to Florida's Atlantic beaches. Blacktip and spinner sharks move through in schools during the spring baitfish migration and the fall mullet run, feeding on fish pushed tight against the shoreline. In water clouded by churned sand, a kicking foot can read as prey. Most recorded incidents involve a single bite to a foot, ankle or lower leg. None of the 10 fatal shark attacks logged in U.S. waters between 2016 and 2025 occurred anywhere in Florida, St. Lucie included.

The tie with Charleston County links two coastlines that work differently. St. Lucie's incidents come from a subtropical surf zone where the ocean rarely cools enough to empty the water of swimmers. Charleston's come from a barrier island and tidal creek system roughly 400 miles north, where the swimming season is shorter and the bite history compresses into the warmer months. Identical totals, different mechanics.

Every Florida county on this list sits on the state's Atlantic side, and Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie form a continuous run of coastline across the southeastern part of the peninsula. That clustering is the clearest pattern in the county-level data: three adjoining counties, each with enough recorded bites to place nationally, along a single stretch of shore.

St. Lucie's 35 attacks accumulated gradually across nearly two centuries of record-keeping. Nothing in the past decade separates the county from the long-term trend around it.